Elden Ring Director Placed Important Restraints on George R.R. Martin's Contributions

ign.com:

With Elden Ring finally out in the wild, eager players are undoubtedly combing every inch of FromSoftware's new fantasy world to find the influences of writer George R. R. Martin. Martin, the author of the Game of Thrones series, was famously brought onto Elden Ring to write the backstory for the in-game universe.

But in a new interview with New Yorker, game director Hidetaka Miyazaki revealed that he placed a few key restrictions on what Martin could do.

According to Miyazaki, Martin primarily wrote snippets of text about the world's history, its characters, and mythology, including the destruction of the Elden Ring and the subsequent scattering of shards. While this was something we learned previously, Miyazaki further clarified why this was the case.

“In our games, the story must always serve the player experience,” Miyazaki said. “If [Martin] had written the game’s story, I would have worried that we might have to drift from that. I wanted him to be able to write freely and not to feel restrained by some obscure mechanic that might have to change in development.”

It's an approach that, in retrospect, makes sense for the kinds of stories Miyazaki and FromSoftware tell. Dark Souls and its offshoots are rich with lore, but it's often presented through item descriptions or heavily implied, left to spark the imagination of lore-hungry fans. FromSoftware also tends to depict worlds well after some great calamity has occurred, encouraging players to discover what became of the major characters, for fates better or (usually) worse.

“That power of imagination is important to me,” he said. “Offering room for user interpretation creates a sense of communication with the audience—and, of course, communication between users in the